Thanks to the Encounter Journal feature on the PTR, we now have what drops from what boss in our knowledge for Firelands. This is pretty awesome and it confirms things most people speculated about ilevels, including how Ragnaros has an elevated ilevel like Sinestra does from current content (as well as a mace that any Holy paladin would probably kill to have). Crystallized Firestone also drops from all heroic modes of bosses it seems and it is uncertain as to what this item is used for, though it could quite possibly be used to upgrade armor pieces.

A lot of people thought that Smoldering Egg of Millagazor would drop from a rare mob, but no, that's also our favorite Firelord. Speaking of mounts, however, it's possible that since Flametalon of Alysrazor isn't tied to a loot table for a boss currently that it could be from a rare mob or a random drop from doing the zone quests--which Alysrazor plays a role in. We'll have to wait and see.

Blizzard has just released a new PTR patch, as a follow-up to yesterday's major official patch notes update. Just a few class changes and clarifications today, mostly already documented in the previous patch notes update - including spell details for the nerfed raid boss abilities. We're still digging in the patch data, so if we find any more interesting additions we'll be updating this post!

As for new items, Blizzard has added yet another huge batch of epic quality loots (over 250 new/updated items!), and finally started adding the actual item sets for the Tier 12 items, so you guys will be able to easily find and check out set bonuses and all that good stuff!

Latest Additions

You guys may remember that the Celestial Dragon was added way back in Patch 3.3.3 (along with the Celestial Steed). We discovered a model for it way back then, and while I see that other sites are reporting a different model I do believe this is a later version of it, featuring some snazzy armor and sweet animations! Be sure to click the image to check it out in 3D!(Note: It seems the lil' dude is pretty high up there in our viewer, remember that you can simply hold down the right mouse button to adjust the model position!)

New Icons

And here comes the latest Ask the Devs rubric we'll see for a long time. The Firelands. If you have submitted any questions regarding the new bosses, T12, the daily quest hubs in Hyjal and the Firelands, or just about lore, here's your chance to see them (or ones like them) answered. Some of the more interesting questions inquire after that Abyssal Maw dungeon Blizzard promised us a while back (we are not getting it), raid balance and boss mechanics in the Firelands, and even a little bit of lore to make those of us into that kind of thing very happy.

Ask the Devs #9 was just announced, and its topic will be Tanking. The official thread for it will come a little later today, so get your questions ready!

What happened with the Abyssal Maw dungeon that was supposed to come with Firelands? – Maryjanee (EU-EN), Espiritu (NA)

Our initial plan for this raid tier was to have fewer bosses in Firelands and a small number of bosses in the Abyssal Maw. As we looked more closely at Firelands, though, we realized that it deserved more bosses. We also got excited about designing item art (and set bonuses!) that were very fiery in nature, and the Molten Front questing area was turning out to be really cool, so we ended up piling more resources into Firelands. That led to the decision to focus on one strong theme (fire), rather than a more diluted fire-and-water theme.

The case for Abyssal Maw pitch was that we could reuse a lot of existing assets (the fights were to take place in a giant shelled demigod like Nespirah), and while we are willing to do that, we thought Abyssal Maw would just pale in comparison to the magnificence of the Firelands. So, we put all of our eggs into that one basket. We’ve decided for now that the Vashj’ir quest line along with the Throne of the Tides dungeon does a pretty good job of finishing the Neptulon story.

A majority of the fights in T11 favored having little or no Melee DPS. Are there plans to fix this? – Merissa (NA), Espiritu (NA)

We view this more of a class problem than an encounter problem. It used to be the case that casters really suffered whenever they had to move, which was the penalty they paid in order to make up for the fact that melee took a lot of extra damage. Nowadays, melee classes don’t really take that much extra damage, and we’ve also given casters a number of movement-oriented tools designed to keep their DPS from dropping as much as it used to when they are asked to shoot-and-scoot.

Whenever there are situations in an encounter that encourage grouping, the ranged often move into melee (with the occasional exception for hunters), but melee never move to ranged. Any of the fights that punish clumping also tend to punish melee more. We recognize all of these problems, as do many players, but it’s challenging to address them quickly. For example, without compensation, casters would suffer a lot in PvP if their movement tools were suddenly stripped away.

In the meantime, we don’t want to over-constrain encounter design, or worse, make it feel very formulaic by getting to the point where players expect the “melee fight” to be followed by the “adds fight,” followed by the “Patchwerk fight,” then the “ranged fight.” We’re making sure that melee have some fights where they can shine in Firelands. To use just one example, the Sons of Flame on Ragnaros tend to be better handled by melee than ranged.

When Tier 11 content was first launched, the majority of fights in 25-person were explicitly easier than the 10-person version, such as Nefarian and almost every Heroic encounter. Do you have plans to make content for 25 players more appealing in patch 4.2? – Wynter (EU-DE), Nisana (EU-FR), Espiritu (NA)

The supposition that easier content is less appealing in the question is a bit puzzling given how few guilds have been able to finish the heroic 25 encounters. In any event, it wasn’t that we set out to make sure 10s and 25s were different. If anything, we wanted to make sure that 25s weren’t significantly harder, since many of the 25-player guilds were convinced we were trying to force them to become 10-player raiding guilds.

There were some fights at launch where 10s were too challenging (and some fights where the opposite was true), but we view those as nails in a board that need to be either beat down or pried up until they are more even with everything else. Progress in NA and EU on the 25-player content was faster than on the 10-player content, but this was probably largely because most progression oriented guilds in those regions were already focused on 25-player raids. This is also a regional difference. In Korea for example, there are a lot of hardcore raiding guilds focused on heroic 10-player content.

Will we see anything of a sympathetic view of why Fandral Staghelm changed allegiances before he meets his demise? – Lorinall (NA)

Not every villain in World of Warcraft gets a chance at redemption. In Firelands, the new majordomo will show you no mercy, so we don’t recommend holding back. However, one of the final quest rewards available from the Leyara quest line in the Molten Front daily quest area will give you a chance to see another side of the former archdruid.

It can be anticipated that mana regeneration and maximum mana will increase from gearing up with the new Firelands equipment. Isn’t there a possibility that healers can spam big heals again (and more quick heals) just like in WotLK? If so, is there any plan to handle this without class nerfs? – Whitewnd (KR)

As damage increases, healers will need to use their largest, most inefficient heals more regularly to keep up. That’s fine and was all part of the design. We just didn’t want players to opt out of mana regeneration too early in the content because then Spirit (and mana-related procs) on gear wouldn’t be attractive, and because we’d have to balance difficulty by making the tanks die in a couple of GCDs if not healed continually. Most progression-oriented healers still want large amounts of Spirit, often in every single slot. As they get more comfortable with their mana, they’ll be able to replace some of that Spirit with other stats, but the Spirit will still be valuable; more Spirit on a set piece for example might mean being able to use a different enchant or reforge on another piece.

This is still a much better place to be than we were with Lich King content, where mana stopped mattering in the first raid tier. Aside from the mana changes we’ve already made to Innervate, Mana Tide Totem and paladin heals, we don’t think an overall regen nerf is necessary.

Do we have any plans to include events similar to the Wrath Gate? – Mushik (LA), 잔메르 (KR)

We have a short cinematic or two, but nothing on the scale of the Wrath Gate cinematic for 4.2. We enjoy that kind of epic spectacle and we’ll do it when it makes sense; however, we also received plenty of feedback from the Cataclysm questing experience that we occasionally took control away from players too often, especially in Uldum, in order to tell the story, so we want to be very careful when we do that in the future. That said, there are some very cinematic moments in 4.2 such as watching the druid trees on the Molten Front grow or seeing the bridge form to Sulfuron Keep.

Will there be weekly missions in the Firelands similar to Icecrown Citadel in where the players were required to alter the dynamics of each encounter in order to complete them and receive rewards such as promordial saronite and gold? – Orisai (LA)

We aren’t doing these types of quests for the Firelands raid, but that doesn’t rule out us doing them again in some future tier of content.

In Cataclysm, it has been hard to find unique raid mounts such as Siege Engines in Ulduar or Drakes in The Eye of Eternity. Can we expect to see battles using unique mounts or other objects among the Firelands raids? – 빛그리고사제 (KR)

We were worried players might be suffering from a little bit of encounter vehicle fatigue. We’ll do it when it makes sense for an encounter, but we don’t want players to get sick of seeing fights on vehicles.

There are several fight mechanics in Firelands that depart from usual “don’t stand in the fire” or ”interrupt important spells” routine. For example, you can fly during part of the Alysrazor encounter, you climb webs during the Beth’tilac encounter, and you steer Lord Rhyolith around in a manner very different from standard kiting. (http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2219880)

Is Ragnaros gonna have a speech about setbacks? – Gerox (NA)

The 4.2 Patch Notes have been updated! This latest update brings major nerfs to T11 encounters in preparation for Firelands, as Blizzard wishes to allow more players access to the content. This update also contains an assortment of class changes (including some important tanking changes) as well as a few more T12 set bonus adjustments.

Nethaera

With the upcoming content patch, 10- and 25-person Normal mode raid encounters will be receiving a comprehensive set of tuning adjustments to decrease their difficulty.

These changes will allow players, groups, and guilds who have yet to experience the content in Blackwing Descent, Bastion of Twilight, and Throne of the the Four Winds an opportunity to do so.

With the addition of a new tier of armor and weapons, we want to make the previous tier more accessible in ways other than just a shift of currency type, so we are making item level 359 gear purchasable for Justice points in the upcoming content patch.

Blizzard Entertainment

Classes: General

Dodge: Death Knights, paladins, and warriors no longer receive any bonus to their chance to dodge from Agility. Their base chance to dodge is now a fixed 5%.

Parry: Death Knights, paladins, and warriors now receive 27% of their Strength bonuses as parry rating, up from 25%. This conversion still only applies to Strength above and beyond their base Strength.

Pyroblast: The version of this spell cast when is not active did slightly less damage than the Hot Streak version. Its damage has been increased so that both versions of Pyroblast now do the same amount of damage.

: When Living Bomb is spread via this talent, it will only be spread to two additional targets. The net effect is that if the Mage’s most recent Living Bomb target is the same as their Impact target, that target will no longer lose the Living Bomb effect. If Living Bomb is active on multiple targets when the Impact effect is cast, Living Bomb will remain active on the most recent Living Bomb target, and will be added to two other nearby targets.

Wind Chill damage decreased by 20% and now increases damage taken by 5% per stack.

Items

Tier 11 Set Bonuses

Restoration druid Tier 11 2-Piece: This set bonus has been redesigned to work with the new Restoration druid mastery. Druids with this bonus now receive the bonus to Spirit while the Mastery: Harmony mastery bonus to periodic healing is active.

Tier 12 Set Bonuses

Hunter 4P: The effect which makes Shots cost no focus now also makes Kill Command cost no focus.

Mage 4P: The portions of this bonus referring to Arcane Missiles have been removed. Instead, the set bonus now makes Arcane Power reduce the cost of Mage spells by 10% instead of increasing their cost.

The keyring being unavailable on the PTR wasn't a bug, apparently; come 4.2, the keyring is being removed from the game. As someone who remembers when the keyring was a welcomed addition, it's an interesting sign of the times to see it disappear from whence it came. A lot of keys will be going with it as well it seems.

World of Warcraft has evolved quite a bit since the day the Keyring bag slot was added in patch 1.11. When implemented, the Keyring provided players with a convenient way of storing dungeon, quest, and other keys automatically. Back when the largest bag was a mind bottling 18 slots -- rumored to be bottomless -- the Keyring helped save precious bag space. But as things tend to do, time went on, bags got bigger, and designs for (literally and figuratively) gating content evolved through the years. In today’s Azeroth, keys don’t really serve much of a purpose except to take up physical storage space from the game (which could be used for other awesome stuff), and visual interface space from you. Because of this, we’ve decided to get rid of the Keyring in order to free up that space for new features. This change could also potentially allow us to play around with the amount of default storage space you’re allotted down the road. So, what does this mean for you and the keys you might not have looked at in the last couple expansions or so?

We’re currently working on the implementation of a system in patch 4.2 which will handle the removal of the Keyring, while causing you as little hassle with keys as possible. Some keys which no longer serve a purpose in the game will automatically be removed from your inventory. In return, you’ll be compensated for them with their respective vendor sell prices in gold. You might also have random leftover quest keys from outdated quests, or quests which were removed in Cataclysm. Keys that fall into this category have no use and no sell price, as they are labeled as quest items, and will be automatically removed from your inventory. Any remaining keys that might still potentially serve some use in the game will be transferred into your regular inventory. If there is not enough space in your inventory to hold any leftover keys once patch 4.2 hits live realms, the keys will be placed in a backlogged storage system. Once space is made for a backlogged key, the key will take that space after you log out or switch to a new zone (i.e. changing continents, entering a dungeon or Battleground, etc.).

We are continuing to work on new ways of allowing you to better manage the storage of various items in the game, and it is our goal to make sure the removal of the Keyring causes as little inconvenience to you as possible.

Update! Blizzard poster Bashiok has provided a little more insight into what exactly will be happening with existing keys and has mentioned a short list of keys that will not be removed (subject to change, of course), so get ready to lose some inventory space! And don't worry, your Jump-A-Tron days aren't over.

We still have a number of keys that serve a purpose. Heroic BC, for example. Karazhan. We still want to be able to access that content, so will key requirements be removed from those?

Key requirements are removed from the examples you gave, and should be for all other similar examples. Our intent is not to remove the Keyring and then throw a bunch of keys into your normal bags, so we're going through and making changes to more or less finalize the move away from using keys that began midway through Burning Crusade.

So, just as a reference here are the keys we're currently seeing as ones that will not be converted to gold or removed upon release of the patch -- if you have them they'd be put back into your normal inventory. This isn't necessarily a final list, and it's possible we could cut the list down even further before 4.2 releases.

The Elemental Bonds questline is finally up on the PTR and we've taken the liberty of doing it all so you can spoil yourselves silly. As a point of note, this questline is the main lore point behind 4.2 and it features both the villains as well as the heroes of .

As the Blizzard preview teased, this quest chain focuses on Aggra and Thrall both as lovers and heroes trying to save the world. Having seen it in-depth, we can confirm that it focuses on both traditional and nontraditional enemies; as much of the questline is Thrall overcoming his fears and desires as a mortal being with limited time on Azeroth as it is fighting elementals.

To help showcase this truly epic quest, we've compiled a YouTube video of all the scenes from start to finish and we also wrote up more in-depth guide. You can find both in this post.

However, if you don't want to be spoiled, close this page now. Even the comments will probably be rife with debate or speculation on this quest chain and its implementation, outcome, and so on. In short, it's not our fault if you spoil yourselves. We've warned you.

When a new patch hits, the first thing you want to know is where to get geared up. Besides the Firelands raid itself, there are two other methods in which to get gear so far. We've put the items we've uncovered earlier this week and last into separate listings so you can see how you can get gear beyond just the boss drops from a certain Firelord's new domain.

This faction will provide players with extremely good gear--if they can become famed with them, anyway. The specifics aren't out yet and all we know is that it will involve some raiding. Luckily for non-raiders, most people are speculating that it will be more like one of vanilla's reputation grinds: Brood of Nozdormu. Unlike the most recent raid reputation grind of The Ashen Verdict from Wrath of the Lich King, Brood reputation was able to be acquired without raiding up until a certain point and then up until introductory bosses until another. So if it does indeed follow this method, it wouldn't be hard to imagine the friendly or even honored rewards being obtained by people who seldom set foot in the raid instance.

It's also nice to see a lot of items besides rings making an appearance. Keep in mind that these are by no means final and that the database has some items that are probably rewards yet are not tied to the factions yet, so don't be alarmed if there isn't a certain item for your class. It's probably coming.

Much like Champion's Seals from the Argent Tournament, these marks will be earned through Molten Front dailies. As in the Tournament, the marks will be used to progress through the various phases of daily quests, and as you gain access to later phases you will unlock additional vendors. However, Mark of the World Tree are not used to purchase the items from these vendors, as all items can be purchased (once they are accessible) with gold.

In addition, excess Mark of the World Tree can be spent on Writ of Commendation, purchasable for 30 Mark of the World Tree, which can be used to increase your reputation with major city factions (such as Orgrimmar, Ironforge, etc.) by 250. Already Exalted with all of the major cities? No worries, you can spend 30 Mark of the World Tree on Zen'Vorka's Cache (which as of the latest PTR builds, seems bugged but can contain a random green). Hopefully we'll see some better, stable drops implemented soon! :)

Last night's patch included a few interesting new 3D models after all! Most notably the fiery version of Anzu makes an appearance--he was mentioned here a while ago as one of the coveted vanity rewards, but there's still no word on where he drops.

In addition to this bad boy, the patch also included an amazing humanoid model for the bronze dragon Nozdormu (he shows up at some part of the legendary staff quest chain and the Thrall questline) and an amazing set of fiery shoulders upon one of Majordomo Staghelm's Druids of the Flame. These guys appear in the Alysrazor encounter and throughout Firelands as trash mobs. Not only that, but we've got an updated model for the new , a scorching Overfiend, and a poor guy having a very rough day. Be sure to click the screenshots and check 'em out in our awesome 3D model viewer!

Blizzard has snuck another late night patch onto the 4.2 PTRs! This latest update doesn't seem to feature very many interesting spell changes, as most seem to be simply tooltip clarifications and rewordings, but there's probably something I'm not noticing so you guys should definitely check 'em out! Pretty ho-hum new icons, as well, though the one labeled "fireravengodmount" definitely raises my eyebrow. Speaking of mounts, looks like PVP aficionados are going to get some love with the new ! Snazzy!

New Icons

As many of you guys may remember, way back at BlizzCon, Blizzard announced that they were working on a new Encounter Journal (then called "Dungeon Journal") game feature. This new feature would provide tons of valuable information in-game to players, including detailed dungeon information such as boss lists, drop tables, and ability details. Well, not only is the tool finally being added to World of Warcraft in the upcoming Patch 4.2, but we're happy to announce that we have been able to make all of the Encounter Journal details available on the site, as well!

Now dungeon pages on Wowhead (including zone pages and boss pages) will feature content directly from Blizzard's in-game Encounter Journal! Blizzard has been slowly implementing this content on the PTR, so not all dungeons feature Encounter Journal information at this time, but as soon new entries are available they'll start showing up on their respective dungeon pages.